Jessica Boddy

Every year, little black-and-white birds called pied flycatchers make the lengthy trek from sub-saharan Africa to northern Europe to feast on caterpillars, claim a nest, and have babies. This typically goes off without a hitch, and the birds return to Africa a few months later, offspring in tow. But recently, some flycatchers have arrived to find their nesting sites occupied by haughty, territorial great tits. And those birds don’t just chase flycatchers away—they brutally attack them, kill them…

A Frankensteinian mashup of a platypus, a stegosaurus, and a marine reptile might seem like something born from a game of MadLibs, but new fossil discoveries have revealed just that. Scientists think the creature, known as Eretmorhipis carrolldongi, was an Early Triassic reptile that swam around with a beak very similar to that of the duck-billed platypus, and had jagged, bony plates down its back à la the stegosaurus. The finding could shake up what we know about evolution after the end-Permian…

Sometimes, especially with clothes made from synthetic fibers, unpleasant odors linger even after multiple washes. Why do gym clothes stink so badly?

The words “singing mice” might conjure up memories of Cinderelly’s—er, Cinderella’s pals and a squeaky yet exquisitely harmonized Christmas song sung by another trio of rodents. Those musical mice might be fictional, but singing mice actually do exist—though their songs don’t sound anything like Gus Gus’ or Alvin’s. Some mice squeak out tunes to woo females, though they aren’t always audible to human ears. But Scotinomys teguina, more commonly known as Alston’s singing mouse, scurries through Ce…

Ever since the NASA spacecraft OSIRIS-REx reached the asteroid known as Bennu in December of last year, it’s been quietly orbiting and snapping photos. It is this writer’s personal opinion that, from a distance, those photos make Bennu look like a hot pocket or perhaps a Totino’s pizza roll—which would be awesome, since the mouth-watering asteroid is as roughly as wide as the Empire State building is tall. But new images released on Tuesday reveal much more than a tasty space snack. Bennu appear…

By peering into the center of the Milky Way, astronomers have revealed new evidence of how stars in our galaxy were born—and it seems like things went down much more dramatically than we thought. Researchers used the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile’s Atacama Desert to capture the section of sky pictured above, which has a simply flabbergasting amount of detail. Imaging stars with such precision is the equivalent of spotting a soccer ball in Zurich while stand…

The biggest clamors most of us will experience are things like jackhammers and jet engines, but the most ear-shattering noises in existence would do far worse than make you wince. Events on the scale of volcanic eruptions and exploding meteorites register at more than 194 decibels, a level that generates enough force to potentially pierce your eardrums and pop your lungs. At those highs, sound waves are so powerful, they no longer slip through the air but rather shove molecules out of their way.…

NASA just revealed a new view of the Pillars of Creation. By using infrared light to craft the image instead of visible light, scientists were able to reveal baby stars that were hidden behind the gaseous, spectral columns.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced on Tuesday that the 2020 Nobel Prize in physics will be shared by three astrophysicists: Andrea Ghez at UCLA, Reinhard Genzel of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany, and Oxford University’s Roger Penrose. The award acknowledges their pioneering work in our understanding of black holes, particularly the one sitting at the center of our own galaxy. These supermassive objects devour everything that comes too close, includi…

Depending on how good of a friend they are, get them started with a Nintendo Switch, some classic games, or a fun-as-heck accessory.